Rome did not create a great empire by having meetings, they did it by killing all those who opposed them. If at first you don't succeed, failure may be your style.
Quentin CrispYou can't be a person and a lady. If you're a person, you can open the damned door yourself.
Quentin CrispI'm happy. I don't ever have to pay anything, and I don't ever have to wash the dishes, and I don't ever have to behave nicely.
Quentin CrispI have to work in England, but here in America you don't have to work. You can sort of enter the profession of being.
Quentin CrispWhat I wanted most of all was to use sex as a weapon to allure, subjugate, and, if possible, destroy the personality of others.
Quentin CrispKeeping up with the Joneses was a full-time job with my mother and father. It was not until many years later when I lived alone that I realized how much cheaper it was to drag the Joneses down to my level.
Quentin CrispThe British do not expect happiness. I had the impression, all the time that I lived there, that they do not want to be happy; they want to be right.
Quentin CrispI read all the books I could find about manners, and the extraordinary thing was, in all books up to the end of the Second World War, most were directed at how to comport yourself in the presence of the ladies.
Quentin CrispIf Mr. Vincent Price were to be co-starred with Miss Bette Davis in a story by Mr. Edgar Allan Poe directed by Mr. Roger Corman, it could not fully express the pent-up violence and depravity of a single day in the life of the average family.
Quentin CrispThere are three reasons for becoming a writer: the first is that you need the money; the second that you have something to say that you think the world should know; the third is that you can't think what to do with the long winter evenings.
Quentin CrispThe very purpose of existence is to reconcile the glowing opinion we hold of ourselves with the appalling things that other people think about us.
Quentin CrispThe happiest moments in any affair take place after the loved one has learned to accommodate the lover and before the maddening personality of either party has emerged like a jagged rock from the receding tides of lust and curiosity.
Quentin CrispWhat would you be like if you were the only person in the world? If you want to be truly happy you must be that person.
Quentin CrispI learned very early in life that I was always going to need people more than they needed me
Quentin CrispMuddled syntax is the outward and audible sign of confused minds, and the misuse of grammar the result of illogical thinking.
Quentin CrispWhen I told the people of Northern Ireland that I was an atheist, a woman in the audience stood up and said, 'Yes, but is it the God of the Catholics or the God of the Protestants in whom you don't believe?'
Quentin CrispIt is true that in America I've become a national hero, but really I was a hopeless case, that was all.
Quentin CrispOne should always be wary of anyone who promises that their love will last longer than a weekend.
Quentin CrispBecause it is in the nature of things that they become extreme, we have passed down from manliness to cruelty. If I had been told when I was 20 that there was a tavern in the town where the brave and the cruel were gathered together, I would have run all the way and I would have gone up to the largest and leatheriest of the denizens and said: If you truly love me, kill the bartender.
Quentin CrispWhen I was young, I and the whole world thought that all homosexuals were effeminate. And of course they're not. You can just see which people are effeminate; that's the only difference. So, I became a prototype of the effeminate man, because I was conspicuously effeminate. But camp is not something I do, it's something I am.
Quentin CrispThe programs constantly repeat themselves and one another. No one has yet had the nerve to say, 'As we have nothing sensible to tell you between now and 8:30, please tune in again then.
Quentin CrispAnother friend began to say, "Well, Quentin has a problem of adjusting himself to society and he..." This sentence was never finished. The ballet teacher expostulated, "I don't agree. Quentin does exactly as he pleases. The rest of us have to adapt ourselves to him."
Quentin CrispAs soon as a person takes a part as a homosexual, the press says, "What do your wife and children think of this?" And the actor never says, "Well, last week I was a murderer, and the week before that I was a child molester, and the week before that I was a lunatic. But now I'm a homosexual."
Quentin CrispWhat matters is not whether you put your fork or knife together because you've finished your meal, or something like that. What matters is that you don't offend people, or hurt their feelings by mistake by saying the wrong thing or doing the wrong thing.
Quentin CrispIt is explained that all relationships require a little give and take. This is untrue. Any partnership demands that we give and give and give and at the last, as we flop into our graves exhausted, we are told that we didn't give enough.
Quentin CrispIn New York, I find people so courteous and so generous. Free drinks in bars. Free taxi rides.
Quentin CrispWhy get married? For human beings, marriage is such an unnatural state. If you want monogamy, it has been said, you should marry a swan.
Quentin CrispLife is a game in which the rules are constantly changing; nothing spoils a game more than those who take it seriously. Adultery? Phooey! You should never subjugate yourself to another nor seek the subjugation of someone else to yourself. If you follow that Crispian principle you will be able to say Phooey, too, instead of reaching for your gun when you fancy yourself betrayed.
Quentin CrispWhen asked, 'Shall I tell my mother I'm gay?', I reply, 'Never tell your mother anything.
Quentin Crisp